This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 1532708608321481v1 1532708608321481v2 9/2/286    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Monahan, T. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Dreams of Control at a Distance: Gender, Surveillance, and Social Control

Vanderbilt University, torin.monahan{at}vanderbilt.edu

Modern surveillance systems operate upon masculine logics of disembodied control at a distance. As such, they artificially abstract bodies, identities, and interactions from social contexts in ways that both obscure and aggravate gender and other social inequalities. This article explores the gender dimensions of surveillance systems in several public domains: welfare, healthcare, and transportation. By exposing the dominant rationalities of such systems and critiquing the discourses that support them, one can challenge the supposed neutrality of such technologies and question the power relations to which they give rise. The goal of this article, therefore, is to introduce a new line of inquiry into gender and surveillance, one that perceives surveillance as operating on the level of abstraction but with embodied effects for women and men.

Key Words: surveillance • technology • gender • social control • space

This version was published on April 1, 2009

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 286-305 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1532708608321481


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?